Considering Intel wasn't able to break into new areas in the past 20+ years despite all the money it has sunk into "new business", and the home turf is now wrecked inside and out. Is there any successful examples out there that a company in that position were turned around? Or is it going the ways of PanAm, Kodak, Xerox, etc.?
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IBM with Louis Gertsner
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_V._Gerstner_Jr.
From the wiki..Upon becoming chief executive of IBM, Gerstner declared: "the last thing IBM needs right now is a vision", as he instead focused on execution, decisiveness, simplifying the organization for speed, and breaking the gridlock. Many expected heads to roll, yet Gerstner initially changed only the CFO, the HR chief, and three key line executives.[9][10]
In his memoir, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?, he describes his arrival at the company in April 1993, when an active plan was in place to dis-aggregate the company. The prevailing wisdom of the time held that IBM's core mainframe business was headed for obsolescence.
Reverse spin-out merger would be the best approach. Intel India and Intel China become their subsidaries. The offices in EMEA (Europe) become subsidary (France, Germany and UK). US Intel splits the CEO job between two people. One for Engineering,Development, Manufacturing and the other for Sales,Marketing,HR, Finance. Each of the subsidaries have their own CEO that reports the Co-Ceo's at Intel.
Innovators delemma and three stooges for CEOs
Once can argue that Nadella turned Microsoft around from being completely reliant on Windows and Office. However, it's a lot easier to "pivot" in software than in semiconductors. It's also pretty much impossible to pivot with the existing talent pool because everyone is set in their ways and afraid to take risks. That's why large companies "acqui-hire" top talent. Intel is trying to do that aggressively. A friend of mine is a co-founder of one of Intels recent large acquisitions. I know for a fact that this person, and many of the other top officials of the startup, are resting and vesting. They will quit the day they are fully vested and counting the days. This is one example of why Intel's acqui-hires don't work out. Nobody wants to stay after vesting because the company culture is completely toxic. The bottom line is that if you want to turn the company around you have to provide an environment where people actually want to work. This was Google's secret to attracting top talent. The money follows. From a sports analogy, look at the Warriors. If you have a deep bench of talent it's pretty hard to lose. However, if the Warriors lose about three of their top starts their performance will plummet. The Cavs will probably never make the playoffs after losing just one guy.
If one would fire an Intel VP every week it would take 50 years to get that job done.
Chrysler under Lee Iacocca, but he started by firing the top two company execs. Then, proceeded to fire executives from the top nearly every week for over a year.
Intel is too big, too unwieldy, and has too strong a culture to turn in any direction but down. It is better to break it up into smaller pieces, letting local despots rule and screw themselves. At the mean time, share holders can exit piece by piece, like what they did with HP.